Playtest (Black Mirror)

"Playtest" is the second episode of the third series of Black Mirror, starring Wyatt Russell and Hannah John-Kamen. It was written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg and premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016.^[1][2]

Plot

Cooper (Wyatt Russell), a man who lives with his mother, leaves home to travel the world. He keeps ignoring his mother's calls, feeling unable to connect to her following his father developing early onset Alzheimer's and dying. In London, shortly before he plans to return home, he meets Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen). He shows her an app he has been using, Oddjobs, which shows him various tasks he can complete for money. He sees one nearby related to a video game company, SaitoGemu. At the company's building, Katie (Wunmi Mosaku) meets him and takes him to a white room where he can test out a new technology the company has. Despite her telling him to turn his phone off for security reasons, he switches it back on when Katie leaves, to send Sonja a picture of the technology he will be using. When she returns, she asks him to sign a form, and injects a miniature device into the back of his head. During the initialization process Cooper's mother calls his phone again, but Katie cancels the call before continuing the process.

Cooper plays a game of Whack-a-Mole using the 3D graphics technology of the chip, and enjoys it massively. After it is over, Katie asks him if he wishes to participate in a beta test of the technology, and introduces him to Shou (Ken Yamamura) who runs the company. He talks to Cooper about the new technology, which is designed to probe his brain for information and then try to scare him, and Cooper agrees to take part in the next trial. Katie takes him to a mansion identical to one that appeared in another SaitoGemu video game, and gives him an earpiece to communicate with him before leaving. After a few small jumpscares interspersed with nervous conversation with Katie, the earpiece malfunctions and Sonja shows up at the house unexpectedly, convincing Cooper that the game is dangerous. He thinks she is another hologram created by the technology, but he soon discovers that he can actually physically touch her. She finds a knife and Cooper starts getting worried. She stalks him with the knife; he turns to run to be confronted by a mutant spider and she stabs him in the shoulder with it as he yells in pain. They struggle and fall to the floor, and Cooper rips the skin off her skull before eventually impaling her head with the knife. After a minute of intense pain, the knife and the wound disappear, as does Sonja.

Katie resumes talking in his earpiece, telling Cooper he needs to go to the "access point" in the house, as he wants the test to stop. Convinced she is just trying to scare him, he makes his way to the access point. Katie then reveals that there is no access point and that she was just trying to see if they had broken him enough to obey instructions without question. She then starts asking him basic questions about his mother's appearance and himself, and he realizes he is losing his memories, to the point where he does not recognize himself in the mirror. He starts to yell for her to get out of his head, but even upon removing the earpiece, he still hears her voice. He smashes the mirror and attempts to remove the miniature device with a piece of glass. At this point, Katie and Shou burst through the door, saying the technology has gone too far into his brain, and cannot be shut off.

He wakes up, back in the room where Katie and Shou started the experiment; according to Katie and Shou, only one second had passed since the experiment had begun. Shou apologizes for the terror he caused Cooper, saying that the game was not designed to go that far. Cooper returns home to his mother, who does not recognize him indicating that she too has developed Alzheimer's like his father. She repeats over and over that she needs to call Cooper, and starts dialing his number in her phone.

It is revealed that Cooper is still in the white room where Katie took him. He suffers from a seizure and falls to the floor, dead, as Katie watches. Cooper's phone is ringing. Shou enters the room, asking what happened, and Katie says that the phone must have interfered with the technology. Shou tells Katie to report the test into the database. Katie does so, as Cooper's body is being disposed of into a body bag. She notes that the experiment lasted 0.04 seconds, that the cause of death was Cooper's phone's interference, and that he "called 'Mom'" as he died.

Production

Hannah John-Kamen appears in this episode as Sonja after appearing briefly in an unrelated role in the series one episode "Fifteen Million Merits". In an interview in October 2016, Charlie Brooker revealed that they were initially going to have the song John-Kamen's character sang in "Fifteen Million Merits" playing on the radio in the background in the episode, but were unable to due to a licensing issue.^[3]

The extra twist at the end of the episode was not in the original treatment for the episode, but Brooker decided to add it after conversations with Trachtenberg.^[4] He also admitted that the extra twist was partly inspired by Mallory Ortberg who wrote “Next on Black Mirror: What if phones, but too much?” in an article.^[4] Trachtenberg also revealed that the casting of Wyatt Russell as Cooper led to the rudeness of the character being toned down so that the audience is "rooting for him to learn a lesson".^[5] Moreover, he revealed that the episode had many video game easter eggs, including BioShock, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Resident Evil references.^[5]

Critical reception

Adam Chitwood of Collider described the episode as one of the major highlights of the season in a "genuinely terrifying video game-centric episode".^[6] Janey Tracey praised Trachtenberg's direction noting how he used "savvy camera angles to both ratchet up the tension during scary moments and deflate it during funny moments".^[7]

References

External links

• "Playtest" at the Internet Movie Database